According to United Nations climate experts, it is "now or never" to avert catastrophic temperature rises and the disintegration of the climatic systems that support our way of life.
Reports of bomb-like blizzards and scorching droughts create a grim image of climate change's potential reality.
Indeed, weather is growing worse for people in the United States and across the world, according to Spencer Weart, a historian and retiring head of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics in College Park, Maryland.
Worsening of weather due to climate change
DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images
The average weather through time is referred to as climate, and Earth has a long and dramatic history of natural climate change, as per LiveScience.
A million-year rainfall might have concluded the Triassic epoch (252 million to 201 million years ago).
Furthermore, the dinosaur-killing asteroid that struck Earth at the end of the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago) plummeted sections of the sky into frozen shadows for centuries under thick clouds of ash and particles.
Then, Earth's temperatures spiked by 100,000 years due to the ginormous concentration of carbon dioxide the meteor stirred up when it wrecked into the Yucatán Peninsula.
While huge climatic swings are nothing new to our planet, they have historically been extremely destructive, and our present insatiable hunger for fossil fuels is putting in motion a fast swing that might have disastrous repercussions for civilization.
Modern data showed that an unnatural global warming trend has taken control of the Earth's climate in recent decades.
Humans are releasing heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other emissions into the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning, which is rising global temperatures.
According to Weart, when the earth warms, more water evaporates from the surface of dry places and increases precipitation in wet parts, implying that this warming will impact weather in a number of ways, making it hotter and colder, more intense, more chaotic, and, in a word, "worse."
In other words, dry areas become drier and wet parts become wetter.
More moisture in the atmosphere as the globe warms can also result in more snowfall throughout the winter.
Long-term climate change may have a negative impact on many sectors of civilization, either directly or indirectly, as per the US EPA.
Warmer average global temperatures, for example, may raise air conditioning expenses and impact the spread of infections such as Lyme disease, but they may also improve growth conditions for specific crops.
Extreme weather changes pose a hazard to civilization as well.
For example, extreme heat events that are more frequent and intense can cause more diseases and fatalities, particularly among vulnerable people, as well as damage to some crops.
While greater rainfall can restore water supplies and help agriculture, severe storms can inflict property damage, loss of life, and population relocation, as well as temporarily interrupt key services including transportation, telecommunications, energy, and water supplies.
Temperatures in the United States and throughout the world Since 1901, average temperatures in the contiguous 48 states have risen, with a faster pace of warming in the last 30 years. Since 1998, eight of the top ten hottest years on record have happened.
Average global temperatures follow a similar pattern, and the top ten warmest years on record have all happened since 2005.
Temperatures have risen the greatest in portions of the United States' north, west, and Alaska.
Temperature Variation by Season Average temperatures rise throughout the year as the Earth warms overall, but the increases may be greater in some seasons than others.
The average winter temperature in the contiguous 48 states has risen by almost 3°F since 1896.
